A PROPOSAL to merge Whinfield infant and junior schools reaches a critical stage on Monday when it goes before the borough council's school organisation committee.

The merger would create a 630-pupil primary - the biggest in the borough - within the walls of the two existing buildings.

The existing schools would be joined only by an entrance corridor.

Twenty-seven letters of protest will be considered by the committee.

One parent comments on what she describes as the bad design of the buildings, which means the two schools will never be able to meet as one because of insufficient space.

"The LEA has confirmed the school would be entitled to a loan of £500,000 to make the school easier to use - a truly obscene amount of money we do not need nor want," she writes.

"They may have thought this would be a sweetener and may change our minds, but I can confirm the absolute opposite."

Lynn Thompson, chairman of the junior school governors, said the two schools should work together towards amalgamation over the next four years.

"As the intake reduced to two- form entry, a nursery unit could be accommodated in a spare class," she said.

In time, extra accommodation would be freed up to provide information technology suites, a library, and a joint staff room. There would be no need to use the proffered £500,000.

"If we were to work together towards this over a long time scale, neither school would feel it was unfair or disadvantaged."

Another parent says: "I can't see how two schools can share resources when they will remain separate."

The decision by the groups that make up the committee must be unanimous. If it is not, the matter would be referred to the Department for Education and Skills' Office of the Schools Adjudicator within two weeks.

Its decision would be final.

l THE first turf has been cut to mark the start of a pioneering £34.9m education village

The campus, on the playing fields of Darlington's Haughton Community School, will be the first in the country to be built under the Private Finance Initiative and will see three schools, Haughton Community School, Beaumont Hill Special School and Springfield Primary School, brought together on one site.

Pupils from the three existing schools joined council leader John Williams in the sod-cutting ceremony.